(09-10-2013 01:13 PM)cjlr Wrote: I can recommend you some good textbooks. But, uh, maybe that's not the most useful thing... Shit, though, maybe it is. The introductory textbooks for a general first-year university course ought to be essentially layman-approachable, given that the only assumed background is high school.

But let's see. Physics. You can't go wrong with Hawking (A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell). Kind of esoteric though. I can also once again plug pretty much my favourite book ever (seriously!), A Cultural History of Physics by Károly Simonyi.

Oooh - key words there - layman-approachable.
I'm going to start with some pop-history of science:

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Although a ton is glossed over in this, it is very approachable and certainly a good start to lay out the land, so to speak. I understand there is even a child's edition of it... so it shouldn't be too difficult for even PJ to get through.

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels. ~ Albert Einstein